China-based tech giant NetEase, parent company of NetEase Cloud Music, has made a strategic investment of €1.5 million ($1.68m) in an AI firm based in Luxembourg, called AIVA.
AIVA was founded in 2016 by researcher and composer Denis Shtefan, computer scientist, director and composer Pierre Barreau and Vincent Barreau, an engineer and musician.
According to the company’s website, the AIVA AI tech is “capable of composing emotional soundtracks for films, video games, commercials and any type of entertainment content”.
The company claims that its AI tech “has been learning the art of music composition” from composers such as Mozart, Beethoven and Bach “to create a mathematical model representation of what music is”.
In 2017, AIVA became the first virtual artist to have compositions registered with an author’s rights society (SACEM).
“We think that AI-generated music will enable new use cases of music, and empower the next generation of composers and content creators.”
AIVA
“This achievement does not mean that Aiva will replace musicians; we will continue to encourage collaborations between man and machine,” explains the company.
“We think that AI-generated music will enable new use cases of music, and empower the next generation of composers and content creators.”
AIVA’s latest funding round follows a €650,000 ($729,000) investment it secured in 2017, according to Silicon Luxembourg.
AIVA CEO Pierre Barreau told Silicon Luxembourg: “We started discussions with NetEase in December 2019. Their teams contacted us to discuss a collaboration for one of their new products in China and coincidentally, the discussion led to them investing in our company.”
Silicon Luxembourg also reports that AIVA now plans to “expand its development team, accelerate its product’s growth internationally, and collaborate on the development of new innovative products with NetEase in China”.
NetEase recently launched its secondary IPO on the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (SEHK) under the code, 9999.HK.Music Business Worldwide
